Thought for Food

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Thought for Food

We’re loving this viralnova collection of facts about food, like “Chocolate is a type of milk, but milk is also a type of chocolate,” and “We eat pizza from the inside out.” Or how about “If you turn a taco sideways, it’s just a sandwich.” The list has a math idea, too: “Menus should show the prep time for foods, so you can order based on how much time you have to eat.” Such a great idea: If you have only 1/2 hour total and need 10 minutes to chew, then you shouldn’t order the slow-cooked chicken, right? Any food you order had better cook in less than 20 minutes! Here are a few more math-y food thoughts for you to chew on.

Wee ones: “Smoothies are just cold fruit soup.” If you have a strawberry smoothie, a banana smoothie, a pineapple smoothie and a watermelon smoothie, how many flavors of “fruit soup” do you have?

Little kids: “Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want to eat 2,000 of something.” What if you ate 5,000 grains — can you count up to that by thousands? Bonus: If it takes 10 minutes to cook a burger and you then take 8 minutes to eat it, can you finish in 20 minutes?

Big kids: “When you toast bread, you get toast. But when you toast French bread, you don’t get French toast.” If you take 18 slices of bread and toast some while making the rest into real French toast, how many slices of each did you make if you end up with twice as much toast as French toast? Bonus: What if you do this with 40 slices and end up with 4 times as much toast as French toast: how many of each did you make?

Big kids: 12 toast and 6 French toast. When you need 2 parts to 1 part, you end up with 3 equal parts, so the 1 part is 1/3 of the total, and the other part is 2/3 (which is double). Bonus: 32 toast and 8 French toast…by the same reasoning, if you need 4 parts and 1 part, you have 5 equal parts, so that last part is 1/5 of the total.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.